Tor-Toys

Come and experiment, learn and help us make Things of Internet — we will be putting cheap computers into simple objects to make a shelf full of websites. By using the Tor network and Raspberry Pi and other computers, it is possible to make a simple .onion web page and put it inside any object on your shelf. We’re going to try hosting ascii art, text adventure games, pdf zines, scanner art, animated gifs and what ever else we can think of. If you know about some of these things, come and help, if you don’t, come and learn.

The history of DIY publishing and zines is one of appropriating technologies of composition, copying and distribution to retain empowering control of the messages and images you want to publish. The internet has made communication almost instantaneous and effortless, and yet somehow along the way we have lost control of the technologies of production and distribution. To host a zine on Facebook, Tumblr or even your own web server, means uploading files to a computer harddrive in a warehouse ‘cloud’ service somewhere else in the world.

Visitors to Designing Digital Now are invited to help explore ways of reclaiming digital publishing technologies in the production of ‘eZines’. Ben Dalton will be running two workshops about using cheap Raspberry Pi computers and Tor network software to enable simple DIY publishing from your own home-made servers. All levels of zine publishing and technical expertise are welcome. In this first workshop we will experiment with the possibilities of these systems in technical detail.

For more information please contact Ross Dalziel at ross@cheapjack.org.uk